


This Old Flame (Blow It Out)

by jane_potter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Het Relationship, Case Fic, Dirty Talk, Episode: s01e13 Route 666, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Genderswap, Pre-Canon, Rough Sex, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Wall Sex, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2011-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-21 07:08:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jane_potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a job in Missouri six months after Sam leaves for Stanford, Dean meets a reporter named Casey Robinson. He jumps on the chance to fool around with a guy the way he usually can't risk in smalltown America, and ends up with a whole hell of a lot more than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Old Flame (Blow It Out)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the community bingo square at dean_slash on LJ, for the "genderswapped girl" square. This is a plot bunny I've had in mind for a while, partially to get some trans representation up in here, but also to answer some of the questions I had about Dean and Cassie's smoking (ex-)relationship: Why would Cassie call Dean for help with her father's murder if she had no exposure to supernatural things and genuinely thought he was nuts? How seriously involved were they really? What could motivate Dean to actually tell her the truth about his job?

“And have any of the victims mentioned anything about… strange occurrences in the days earlier? You know, seeing a shape hanging around in the backyard, heavy footsteps in their houses, maybe a smell…”

“Any smell in particular, or just some random smell?”

“Like digested, regurgitated meat,” Dean supplied readily, despite the feeling that the look on the reporter’s face didn’t bode well for his line of questioning. “Hey, did anyone happen to find a small animal buried in their front lawn? A squirrel, for example, or a cat?”

“A cat buried in the front lawn,” Casey Robinson repeated slowly, his eyebrow inching higher.

Dean upped the ante of his smile to _of course that’s a sensible question and you can tell me anything_. “That’s right.”

Casey’s expression went flat and pissed. “Mr Tyler, this is a newspaper, not a tabloid,” he snapped, getting to his feet and sweeping up a stack of files from his desk. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“No no no, look, it’s not like that.” A heartbeat away from grabbing the man’s arm, Dean caught a glimpse of the expression on Casey’s face and withdrew his hand, holding it up in a show of apology. “I just want to find out what happened to Lacey. We’re old friends, you know? I’m looking for answers here, same as you are.”

Casey folded his arms over his chest, chin jutting aggressively. “Yeah? Then why don’t you start by telling me what dead cats and lurking figures have to do with wild dog attacks?”

Dean decided it probably hadn’t been such a good idea to try a reporter for info, even if it had the potential of cutting down on research time by going to someone who’d already done the digging for him. Even this little southern jerkwater town’s most junior reporter had way too much of a bullshit detector. But he’d promised John he’d get the research on their creature done, and he didn’t intend to go back empty handed.

 _Sam wouldn’t’ve made a mistake like this_ , something in Dean’s mind whispered. _Sam would know better. Sam’s good at this_.

Sam was six months gone, and Dean had better get used to it.

“You really believe that?” he asked, shoving aside the thoughts and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level. “Wild dogs? Kind of unusual for this part of Missouri, isn’t it?”

Casey twitched but kept his face impassive. “You have another theory?”

“I do,” Dean said, keeping his voice low as he turned on the charm. “And I think you’d have one of your own, except that what you’ve been digging up doesn’t make a bit of sense. I think that pisses the hell out of you. I think you’ve interviewed the survivors, and heard the kind of things I’m telling you about, but you don’t want to say anything because you mentioned it to your boss—”

Against his will, Casey’s eyes slid to the older black man standing across the room and his arms tightened across his chest—

“—and he thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory, and that’s what he was chewing you out for when I walked in here earlier.”

Casey stared at him. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said at last, tight-lipped.

Dean gave his best smile. “I’m very open-minded.”

The reporter’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah?” he challenged. “Come get a cup of coffee with me, Mr Open-Minded, and we’ll talk.”

Dean hesitated only for a second, just long enough to wonder _is he asking what I think he’s asking_ and then decide that he was okay with that. John was in the next town over, checking the witnesses from the attacks there, and wouldn’t be back until the next day.

Besides, Casey was a source, and Dean practically had a responsibility to work every angle.

“Yeah,” he said to Casey’s challenging expression, with a smile that was slow and inviting but not too open about it, so they could both retreat from it safely if they had to, “all right.”

*

“This place is a bit far into the Bible belt,” Dean said casually, over the mugs of steaming coffee that the waitress had just left at their table.

“Yeah,” Casey agreed, just as faux casually as Dean. “The owner of this place is okay, though. People around here understand discrimination.”

Dean watched Casey take a sip of coffee just a shade darker than his skin, watched the waitress gather up plates from another table with fingers brown against the white ceramic, watched the owner adjust the hairnet over his grey-streaked black curls as he scrubbed the grill in the back.

“That’s good to know,” he said, holding Casey’s eyes long and serious when they snapped up to his.

Awareness stretched between them, full of _yes we’re doing this_ and _you’re reading me right_ , and Dean felt himself relax, just a little, into anticipation of something that was usually too hard and potentially dangerous to find on short notice in smalltown America.

Quietly, Dean invited, “Now why’nt you tell me about these things you’ve been hearing.”

Casey hesitated only momentarily, on that teetering edge of _I’m just imagining things, this is crazy_. Then he pulled a file folder from his shoulder bag and pushed it across the table towards Dean, leaning in and becoming businesslike and, unconsciously, trusting. “I found these depressions in the ground at all the crime scenes. They’re not shaped like anything I’ve ever seen, but they’re directional and evenly spaced, and I think they’re footprints.”

*

Under a streetlamp outside the grill, Casey stopped, pen and pad appearing in his hands. “What motel can I contact you at in case of a development in the story?”

About to reply, Dean paused. “I didn’t say I was in a motel.”

“Obviously. You’re not local, and if you’re only here for info on Lacey Stevenson’s death, then you probably don’t have family to stay with, either.”

“Touché, Sherlock.”

“I prefer Lois Lane.”

Dean reached out to take the pen, only to find that Casey refused to release it. He looked up into Casey’s eyes, hoping that he wasn’t misreading the heat, _knowing_ that he wasn’t misreading the quality of stifled loneliness and near desperation there.

Smalltown America. In the Bible belt.

“Second thought,” Dean murmured, “I could just show you where I’m at.”

Casey’s eyes flashed. “You always that confident in yourself?”

“Some people say it’s attractive.”

“I’m a nice girl,” Casey said dryly, the words mocking and ironic. Dean could tell he wasn’t being turned down but being made to _work_ for it, and he rose to the challenge, shivering for it.

“And I can be a good boy,” he rumbled, stepping in past the boundaries of platonic distance for the first time and feeling the sharp draw of Casey’s breath at the fact that anyone watching could know just what was between them. “Be so good for you.”

“Fuck you’re arrogant,” said Casey, his face lit and hungry.

“I can back it up.”

“Motel,” Casey breathed, his eyes darting around the street, because as much as he obviously wanted to kiss the challenge into Dean’s mouth, he couldn’t, they couldn’t, not there, and they trembled with restraint beneath the watchful eyes of smalltown Missouri. “ _Now_.”

*

Once inside the motel room, Dean barely had a moment to be grateful that he had a single room while John was out of town, that he didn’t have to explain another man’s clothing and bags. The nervous tension that had filled Casey as he waited for Dean to unlock the motel door vanished the second they had shut the door behind them. Casey’s kiss savaged Dean’s mouth, demanding and starved; Dean picked up the needy quality of it and pushed back until he dominated the kiss, tongue sliding expertly against Casey’s teeth. Casey surrendered a moan into his mouth.

Casey’s fingers dug into his biceps; Dean flexed them and pushed Casey back against the door, pulling at his jacket. The other man braced against the wall, arched into him, clutched him close and wrapped his legs around Dean’s hips. The motion was so feminine that it startled Dean momentarily, but then he slid his hands beneath Casey’s ass and hitched him up higher, pulse beating all the more frantically.

They stripped with ragged haste, clothing loosened and discarded in jolts between kisses and groping touches and the hungry mouthing of whatever new skin had been bared. Gasping for breath, Dean finally tossed Casey down on the single bed to fumble with his own zipper, his boots, barely able to remember which to get off first.

“I want you inside me,” Casey panted, the long loose ringlets of his hair strewn across the pillow. He kicked off his shoes, hips lifting as he worked at the button of his jeans, squirmed out of them. “I need you—”

Dean grabbed the ankles of Casey’s jeans and hauled them off, dragging Casey halfway down the bed in the process. Casey made a hungry noise and clambered onto Dean’s lap, dragging him into another fierce kiss. Dean shoved him back down onto the mattress, crowding above and on top and around, close, surging and rocking into the rhythm of the kiss. Casey hooked a leg around Dean’s back, nails scraping the nape of his neck, and while he was distracted Dean shoved a hand beneath the pillow and knocked the Bowie knife down the back of the mattress, to the floor.

Casey arched back against the pillow, rolling his head as Dean sucked on his throat. “Tell me you were a Boy Scout, or I’mma be pissed.”

“Always prepared,” Dean quipped back, grabbing blindly for the wallet he’d thrown on the bedside table. He pushed Casey’s knees apart; Casey spread them wider and bit Dean’s lip.

Aroused as he was, Dean barely remembered not to open the condom with his teeth. He had the feeling that Casey was the kind of person who’d make him get another if he did. As he rolled it down onto his cock with a shaking hand, though, momentarily gripping at the base to steady himself, Dean realised that he was going to need lube.

“Wait,” he said, dragging himself away from Casey’s grasping hands to roll off the bed, searching for the bag he’d shoved underneath it. He tried not to flip it open too far, not wanting Casey to see the .45 sitting on top of his dirty clothes.

“Hurry,” Casey urged. He wrapped a hand around his cock and started to jerk it with a wet slide of spit.

Dean swore and hunted through the bag faster, digging down to the bottom for the tube of KY he kept stashed there. It wasn’t something he used often, and definitely not something John or Sammy knew he had, but he had an excuse in case they—in case John ever found it (“Hey, nobody likes chafing,”), because he wasn’t a kid any more, he was a man; him and Dad, they were partners, they could joke around about stuff the way John and Caleb did.

“Good boy,” Casey praised mockingly when Dean crawled back on top of him, lube in hand.

“Told you,” Dean grinned, then dragged his mouth down to Casey’s chest, his nipples. His hands were already on Casey’s ass, grabby and eager to make up for lost time.

He opened Casey up with fast, urgent strokes, his face mere inches away from Casey’s and panting almost as hard as the other man was. Casey bucked and hissed impatiently until Dean finally gave up, threw the lube aside. Pressing the fat head of his cock against Casey’s entrance, he paused to gasp for a moment before hitching his hips and fucking into Casey, rough and desperate. Groaning at the long push of it, Dean grabbed Casey’s hips with shaky hands, steadying himself even as Casey jolted back against him, trying to drag him deeper.

Casey’s mouth was wide and panting, his eyes shut tight. He wrapped his legs around Dean’s waist, ankles hooked together, thighs squeezing hard.

“Look at me,” Dean grunted. He thrust into Casey slow and steady, proud of the expert roll of his hips and the gasps it won him from Casey’s throat. “Look at me, Case, open your eyes. Trust me, you wanna see this,” he bragged, trying to sting Casey out with a show of arrogance.

“You talk big, white boy,” Casey panted, his eyes flashing open to challenge Dean again. He clenched tight around Dean’s cock, milking a cry from him. “Show me what all those muscles are for or shut up.”

“God, yes,” Dean moaned, and for just a moment he wondered what Casey would think if Dean blasted Bad Company as he drove Casey back home afterwards.

*

Casey was a fan.

Despite the obvious infraction of messing around with the Impala, Dean didn’t even protest when Casey fast-forwarded the tape to “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” and turned the volume up even more.

*

Casey left him with fourteen hickeys, three scratches and a phone number. Dean went to throw it into the trash, hesitated, then stuck it into his wallet.

John got back into town the next morning, waking Dean with a knock at the door. Dean rolled out of bed and greeted him with a shotgun, which he held on John until he’d stepped past the salt line.

“No luck on a lead,” John grunted. The heavy circles under his eyes spoke of a night spent driving. He shouldn’t have had to drive the whole way, not if Sam had been there, but— “You?”

Dean scrambled for the pictures he had swiped from Casey’s folder. “Dead cats found buried at all the victims’ houses, plus some weird footprints, too big to be human, and with claws. Length of the stride says it’s probably about seven feet tall, whatever it is. I’ve got photos.”

Despite his exhaustion, John smiled, and Dean’s heart momentarily lifted from the cold place where Sammy’s abandonment had left it sitting. “’S good work. We’ll get to it after breakfast.”

Emboldened, Dean asked, “Any idea what it is?”

“Not yet. Looks like we’ll be here for a few more days at least.”

That night, Dean didn’t call Casey.

The next night he did.

*

“You do that pretty well,” Casey sighed, half on top of Dean’s chest with an arm across Dean’s waist. It was scarily close to cuddling, but Dean had gotten used to it over the last few times they’d fucked, and he decided it didn’t count if Casey just happened to fall in that position after Dean blew his mind.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed shamelessly. He laughed when Casey punched him in the chest. “Thanks, I’ll be here all week.”

“Really? You and your dad are sticking around that long? I thought you said your job moved you around a lot.”

Dean tried not to let his breath hitch. “It does. We’re staying until we find out what happened to Lacey.”

Casey made a noncommittal noise, pushing himself up to stare down at Dean. “Funny how Mrs. Stevenson says she’s never even heard of you, what with you being such close friends with her daughter.”

Dean made himself grin, put a lie between his teeth as easily as breathing. “We were more like special friends,” he said. “But I’m not exactly the kind of guy she could bring home to mom.”

“Yet you came all this way to find out what happened to her, Dean _Winchester_.”

Caught in a lie he couldn’t refute, Dean only shrugged, because Sammy was the one with the wounded puppy eyes and sad, sensitive face and the ability to fake grief like it was a forged signature, and he wasn’t there. The best Dean could do was ‘strong, silent ex-lover with loyalty issues.’ He’d let Casey’s mind fill in the possible explanations for rolling into town under a false name. It wasn’t like he’d pretended to be a cop or anything (thank god he hadn’t pretended to be a cop).

It was apparently enough for Casey.

“You’re not really such a bad guy, Dean,” he said, something exasperated and affectionate in his liquid brown eyes. “You like to talk tough, but you’re not.”

And that was chick-flick territory right there. “I told you,” he said, and fought the inexplicable impulse to say _babe_ and _honey_ and _sweetheart_ as he looped an arm around Casey’s waist and rolled on top of him to bite at his neck, “I’m a good boy.”

*

The eighth time Dean showed up at Casey’s apartment, it was for one last fuck so that Dean could steal back the card with his cell phone number written on it. He didn’t know what the hell he’d been thinking, giving a—a civilian his work number. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, hanging around long enough for there to _be_ an eighth time.

Casey answered the door in boxers and an old t-shirt, rumpled and grouchy that Dean had come around so close to midnight. For some reason Dean couldn’t fathom, he’d shaved his legs.

The soft, smooth rub of them hooked over Dean’s shoulders as Dean fucked ferociously into Casey had him coming harder than he had in weeks.

Dean left the card where it was in Casey’s wallet.

There was a ninth time.

*

The research got them nowhere, the monster stopped killing, and case went cold. John grew more and more frustrated, refusing to leave town until they’d killed what they’d come for but uncharacteristically unable to get any farther with what they had to work on. Dean barely minded.

He was sitting on a lie, spinning it out to Casey one day at a time, but all the same it was closer to the truth than almost anything he’d ever told anyone outside his family. Family and work were strictly off limits, and that was pretty much Dean’s entire life, but it was freaky how much more Dean found to talk about, lying in bed with Casey sprawled out on his chest, dark curls damp and just-fucked. He started to wait longer and longer before leaving, until finally he was staying the whole night. Casey was the little spoon, but he was also aggressive and confrontational and sharp-tongued, and somehow Dean didn’t mind that he was so very unlike the kind of guy Dean usually went for when he went for guys, big and solid and strong enough for Dean to throw his weight against.

Dean didn’t even realise how often he ate breakfast at Casey’s apartment at four in the morning before they both slipped off to work, because he still left alone when it was dark out and that felt just like every one-night stand ever. After day after a long, empty day of rehashing the same scant evidence and stewing in sullen silence for lack of anything else to _do_ , Dean gradually stopped going to the bar and started grabbing pizza and beer before heading over to Casey’s apartment. He looked forward to it. At some point, quietly, it became habit.

*

“You should rent us a movie before you come over tonight,” Casey said one day, having run into Dean outside the library.

Dean stopped dead. “Holy shit,” he blurted. “We’re—are we—?”

Casey’s eyebrows rose. “Are we…?”

Dean’s mouth worked soundlessly as he ran over the last two weeks in his head, a bright, horrible new light shining on them. “Is this a… something other than fucking?” he asked at last, unable to actually say the word.

“Glad you noticed,” Casey said archly. “Is it really so bad?”

“I have to go,” announced Dean abruptly. Before Casey could get out another word, he had slid into the Impala and roared away, doing at least 20 over the speed limit down the street. He didn’t look at Casey in the rear view mirror, unsure what he’d see and not wanting to find out.

“Found something over in Dunklin County,” he told John, back at the motel. “Local legend about something called a spooklight on an old gravel road. It’s not far.”

“Will-o’-the-wisp,” John said, frowning. “Any deaths?”

“No.”

“Job’s not done here, Dean.”

Panic made Dean argue past the point where the tone of John’s voice would otherwise have cued him to stop talking. “I could go. Just to check it out. Couldn’t hurt to be safe, right? And this thing we’re hunting here, it could be smart. Maybe it knows we’re looking for it. It might’ve stopped killing because there were two of us in town.”

John was still frowning, reluctant to take a suggestion contrary to his SOP, but slowly he nodded.

“It’s a thought. Three days, Dean, there and back, and no more.”

“Yessir,” Dean agreed, and didn’t even have the presence of mind to worry about what John thought of him scrambling to leave so fast for one measly little bit of swamp gas.

*

Casey was mad as hell when Dean showed up at his apartment again, three days and two hours later.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up back here,” he snarled, livid. “What the hell was that, some delayed homophobic panic bullshit? You can fuck a man but you can’t date one?”

“Case, no—”

“Well then, _what_? What did you expect, coming back after that?”

“I don’t know,” Dean said hollowly.

About to slam the door in his face, Casey paused at whatever was in Dean’s expression.

The neighbours on both sides of the apartment banged on the walls at them that night. Dean bit Casey’s nipple and made him scream loud enough to drown them right out again.

*

“Dean, get up. It’s killed again.”

The urgency in John’s voice woke him with a jolt, even before the hand shook his shoulder roughly. Dean jerked awake, swiping clumsily at the sting of pain as his cheek peeled off the metal table he’d fallen asleep on.

Dean was on his feet before the last of the dream had shredded away, reaching for his own shotgun even as he swayed with disorientation. “What happened?”

The expression on John’s face told him almost everything. “I have no idea. There were too many cops at the scene for me to get close. They won’t be looking at the dirt out back, though.”

“We’re gonna track it?”

“I am. You take the Impala, find the nearest garbage dump and stake it out. I’ve got a theory, but we need to move fast.”

Mind awhirl with questions, Dean nonetheless grabbed his keys and ran for the car without another word, peeling out of the parking lot mere seconds after John’s truck roared off in the opposite direction into the dimming evening light.

Garbage dump, garbage dump—he hadn’t seen one in the city limits, and it hadn’t been on the list of important things to research. What was the fastest way he could find—

Five minutes later, he was pounding on the door of Casey’s apartment, collar drenched with sweat from the sprint up six flights of stairs in the muggy Missouri heat. His fingers jittered against his thigh in impatience.

“Mom, what’s the rush? You’re here kind of—”

The words in Casey’s mouth died as he came face to face with Dean, shocked to a standstill. His mouth opened, froze, and something like horror slid across his face.

Stunned, Dean asked stupidly, “Are you wearing a dress?”

“You’re—” Casey swallowed hard—“You’re not supposed to be here tonight. I told you my parents were coming over for supper.”

His words were faint, flat, as if the obvious was the only thing he could manage. Even as shocked as Dean was, though, he still caught the tightening of Casey’s hand on the door frame, the slight sway of his body, like an aborted urge to run.

“Dean—”

“Case—”

The sound of his voice made Casey cut off abruptly, a flinch snapping his mouth closed as if he had been slapped. He took a sharp, shaky breath, swallowing it as if to steel himself.

Casey’s hair was long and loose around his face, curls bounced up with what had to be some kind of product. The dress was blue cotton, thin and clingy in the lingering heat of the day, cut to hips and a narrow waist that Dean had gripped a dozen times and somehow never noticed the shape of. The strap of a bra peeked out from beneath one shoulder, white against Casey’s dark skin, and breasts— _breasts_ pushed out the front of the dress, small and modest but so very, very obvious. Dean was sure Casey didn’t usually have those.

Oh god. Casey with tits. Suddenly Dean was imagining pink satin, and he didn’t have a single bit of air left in his lungs.

Unconsciously, he took a step forwards, eyes locked on Casey’s. Casey backed up into the apartment, but it wasn’t— _quite_ —a flinch. The air hot and stifling between them, silence screaming, Dean edged nearer and Casey stepped back until his back hit the hallway wall and Dean could press in close, not touching but so much closer than he’d ever been before, all because of those two bare inches he couldn’t cross. Neither of them was quite breathing properly.

Past the lump in his throat, Dean choked out, “Are you wearing panties under that?”

After a tense hesitation, Casey nodded.

The fear hidden behind the defensive challenge in his eyes damn near broke Dean then and there.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, his voice shaking all over the place as he tried to keep it hushed. “If I come back tomorrow, will you still be wearin’ ‘em?”

“You want that?” Casey asked hesitantly, unable to raise his voice above a whisper.

Dean shut his eyes and almost swayed on the spot. “Case,” he grated, absolutely wrecked, “you’re killin’ me.”

He opened his eyes in time to see the confidence, the relief rise up on Casey’s face. “Yeah,” said Casey, obviously grasping for control, and how he managed it was beyond Dean. “Yeah, I can do that.”

There were a hundred, a thousand things he wanted to say, and none of them would come out. “Case—Casey, I—” Dean struggled for a moment to remember why he’d even come. He shook himself and backed out of the apartment abruptly, regaining his grasp on the situation at hand. “Where’s the nearest garbage dump?”

“ _What_ —?”

“A dump, or a landfill. It’s important.”

Casey opened and shut his mouth without words. “Seven miles up route 6 and about ten minutes north on the state highway. Why—”

“It’s—it’s important, I can’t explain why, but it is. Thank you.” Dean started back down the hallway, feeling his legs shake even though his strides were long and urgent. Halfway to the stairs, though, he turned on his heel and ran back to seize Casey in a desperate, scorching kiss. Casey surged against him, fingers scraping through Dean’s too-short hair instantly, as if he’d been waiting desperately for the chance.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Dean promised, flayed ragged in every way and knowing that Casey could see it, seeing on Casey’s face that he was so very, very not alone in that. “I promise.”

*

Dean could have done without ever seeing Casey look at him the way he’d seen civilians look at their first Wendigo or poltergeist—like he was something alien and dangerous, potentially savage and utterly unpredictable.

Casey hadn’t answered the door. He’d left it unlocked, though, and Dean had let himself in after knocking and receiving no answer, to find Casey in the kitchen, in the same blue dress as last night, leaning against the counter across the room with his arms folded across his chest, pushing up the small swells of his breasts. The two of them, they couldn’t speak, couldn’t find words, just stared at each other in hot, prickling silence and felt the same sharp need to touch what lay between them even as it terrified them.

“You’re friggin’ gorgeous,” Dean said hoarsely, breaking the silence. His heart was in his throat in a way it hadn’t been since—since ever, as far as he could recall. Fuck if he even had a clue how scared Casey must have been. Sharp, pushy, powerful Casey—scared. God, that was wrong.

Casey’s laugh was a dry, breaking thing. There was something tremulous in his eyes, a hope that almost didn’t dare. “It’s a little late for pick-up lines, don’t you think?” he asked, striving for an illusion of normalcy.

Dean wasn’t having any of it. “No. So not. You are—you are incredible. However—however things are with you, why they are the way they are—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You’re—”

There he broke, the words knotting in his throat, feeling stupid and grasping and lost in the thing that had seized him, wrapped him up and lodged itself in his chest, made itself big and needy and consuming, pushing against his ribs until Dean thought it would break him. That was a thing that was and had only ever been for Sammy, his reason for living, and he didn’t know what to do with it for someone who wasn’t his brother.

“Case, I don’t know what to say,” was all he managed, wrecked beyond the telling of it. “You, it’s you, it’s—just—God, can I just fuck you, because I don’t even know what I mean any more, but I can tell you like that, you know I can, Casey—”

And suddenly their lips were together, teeth clashing, Dean’s hands caught up in the wild tumble of curls that floated around Casey’s head. Dean didn’t know who’d moved first, if he’d moved at all, but he had Casey in his arms and Casey’s hands on his jacket, pulling at it frantically as they stumbled towards the bedroom, bumping and sliding against the hallway walls.

A framed picture fell to the ground, its glass shattering. Single-minded in his plunder of Casey’s willing mouth, Dean grabbed Casey’s ass, hitched him up into the air and carried him over the broken glass without a second thought; Casey’s legs locked around his waist automatically, instinctively, bringing their bodies even closer together.

“Dean, we need to talk about this,” Casey tried, even as he clutched Dean’s head against his neck, tipping his head back to bare his throat to the scrape of stubble.

“After,” was all Dean managed. “Case, Casey—”

“It’s Cassie,” Casey said into his ear, mouthing kisses across his temple.

Dean’s knees hit the bed and he brought them both crashing down onto it. The springs screeched. Casey’s chest rose and fell rapidly, the firm shape of his stuffed bra sending electric shocks across Dean’s skin where it pressed against his chest.

“Case—Cassie. Cas.” The neck Dean was kissing his way down flexed as Casey nodded frantically, whimpering in the back of his throat. “Cas, Christ, _yes_.”

“Like this,” Casey whispered, “just like this.” He squirmed beneath Dean until the dress had been hitched up to his hips, long dark-skinned legs kicking out to wrap around Dean, pull him closer. Dean groaned like a dying man, reaching back a hand to run up the length of one smooth, toned calf, over the curl of Casey’s knee and up his silky thigh.

Between the warm valley of Casey’s legs, Dean slid his hand up and inwards. Casey hadn’t tucked; instead, his cock bulged against the silk it was trapped beneath, curled hard and hot against his belly. It twitched against Dean’s palm. Hardly able to breathe, Dean wrapped his shaking fingers around the length of it, crooked his thumb over the head that peeked out over the silk waistband and rubbed the wetness leaking from the slit. Electricity crackled down his spine so hard that his vision greyed for a second.

“Don’t you punk out on me now,” Casey ordered, when Dean grunted and shuddered against him, hips jerking helplessly as his untouched cock throbbed. “Dean Winchester, don’t you dare.”

“You’re _killing_ me,” he said raggedly, extracting himself far enough that he could regain his self-control. Propped up on his elbows, Dean shut his eyes hard and fought for breath.

Moving like a panther, he slid down the bed, dragging his hands across every angle and curve on the way. Lashes lowered against his cheeks, Dean peeled Casey’s panties down with his teeth, feeling Casey’s thighs shake on either side of his head as Casey stifled moans above him.

When he slid his hand up between Casey’s legs again, his fingers were wet with lubrication from the tube in Casey’s bedside drawer. Their bodies moulded tight together, they rubbed out a slow, scorching heat against each other as Dean worked his fingers into Casey, one and then two, sliding and scissoring with care that he’d never taken before.

No, not care—tenderness. It was needier and more desperate than ever before, both of them nearly frantic with the _yes yes yes we’re okay we’re good together_ , and yet it was the most intimate they had ever been. Dean could feel that, and it scared the shit out of him, and he needed it like oxygen.

Secrets were Dean’s world: he lived them, breathed them, built his whole existence around them. He knew one when he saw it, and he understood the weight of a secret as big as Casey’s. He knew the cost and the significance of being given Casey’s secret to share as his own.

He pushed in slow, face tucked in tight to Casey’s shoulder. Casey raked his nails across Dean’s back, clawing deep and painfully slow, exactly the way he had to know that Dean liked it. Gasping, Dean arched his back into the hot raw scrape, hips rocking deep in the same movement. Balanced on one elbow, fist clenched in the sheets, he reached his other hand between them and found Casey’s cock. A shallow jerk of his wrist timed with the next thrust made them both moan.

“Good boy,” said Casey, something that could have been tears or laughter or sheer giddy shock in his voice. “Oh, good boy, _fuck_ , yes. Dean, yes.”

“Gonna kill me,” Dean repeated, audibly strained. Every muscle in his body trembled with the force and emotion behind each tightly controlled thrust.

“Take me with you,” Casey gasped out, half plea and half order.

It was the last thing either of them managed before their bodies took over the conversation completely, moving into _you’re wonderful, you’re mine_ with the roll of their hips and _I need you so much_ with the clash of lips and teeth, _it’s okay, I’ve got you_ in the demanding clutch of hands and _you’ve got me, I trust you_ in the corresponding submission to every demand. Somewhere in there, Dean thought he might have even forced out the thing in his chest, forced it into the shape of something like _I love you_ and kissed it into the heat of Casey’s mouth where it belonged, another secret trapped behind his teeth. Another secret shared.

*

“So,” Dean said afterwards, lying on his back in the glorious wreckage they’d made of the bed.

Casey was sitting on the edge of the bed, in the middle of a stretch to pull the hopelessly rumpled dress over his head. The yellow half-light of the lamp on the bedside table glowed off his sweat-sleek skin.

“So what?”

Dean watched through slitted eyes as Casey reached behind himself and unhooked the bra clasp, tossing it to the floor as well.

“You’re not out,” Dean said, but it was a question anyway. “I thought people understood discrimination around here.”

Casey laughed derisively, his face turned so that all Dean could see past his riot of dark curls was the curve of his cheekbone and the tip of his nose. “Let’s not get crazy, now. This is still Missouri. Gay is one thing, and even that’s almost enough to blow their minds. I’d rather just let them keep thinking that.”

“You’d rather just—” Dean couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept for a second. “There’s actually bullshit out there you don’t want to fight?”

Casey looked over his shoulder at Dean, flat-mouthed and vaguely pitying in a way that made Dean’s stomach curl up on itself. “There’s a difference between fighting and suicide, Dean. Some things are too big to take on. This is one of them.”

Dean didn’t believe that of monsters, not for a second. There was nothing supernatural that couldn’t be killed. People, though—people were something else. People could be an entirely different kind of evil.

After a moment, all Dean could admit was, with painful honesty, “Guess I wouldn’t know.”

Casey shrugged one shoulder, because it was true. Then a silence fell, not long but heavy, full of nothing to say that could make anything better, spreading the space between them bigger than it was.

Eventually Casey cut Dean a break and moved back to matter-of-fact, saying, “The surgery and therapy cost a lot, or I’d have started in on it by now. We’re not exactly poor, but property taxes on the house are pretty high and the newspaper doesn’t always make a lot, so we can’t afford to put me through college and surgery at the same time. It’ll happen one day, though.”

“College, huh?” Dean said, though he’d already known in passing by the stacks of textbooks sometimes left around the apartment’s living room. He reached out and stroked Casey’s leg, fingertips wandering teasingly up his thigh. “What major?”

“Journalism, obviously,” Casey smiled, turning and crawling on top of Dean. He settled in lightly and leaned down to kiss him, the brush of their lips gentle, almost chaste. Dean chased after Casey’s mouth playfully when Casey drew back, earning himself another kiss and a grin.

“Goddamn,” Dean drawled, “hot and smart.”

Honest to god, he really managed not to think about Sam for just a second—and when the association caught up with him and he did, it was that much worse. As practiced as he had become about controlling his grief around John, Dean was too close for Casey to miss the flicker across his face, however fleeting it was.

“You’re pretty damn smart yourself, Dean,” Casey told him, misreading the flicker entirely. “You’d give me a run for my money if you worked for the paper.” He kissed Dean again, quick and light. “You could take some classes yourself,” he said seriously, so earnestly that Dean almost couldn’t bear it.

The words he’d heard from the mouths of a dozen high school guidance counsellors sounded so fucking _different_ coming from Casey. He wasn’t just an objective to Casey, a teenaged mess to straighten out and set on the picket-fence path. When Casey suggested that he go to college, Dean heard the implied proposition of a future, the assembly of actions into a conjoined existence.

“It’s the family business,” was all he said, gruffly, and didn’t know why it felt like he was begging Casey to understand, why the words sounded so wrong for the first time ever. “You’ve got the newspaper. You know how that is.”

After a couple seconds, Casey said only, “Yeah.” His eyes were disappointed, dissatisfied. Dean’s mouth tasted sour.

Unwilling to let the night end on a note like that, Dean abruptly wrapped an arm around Casey’s waist and rolled them over, tangling in the sheets. Casey gave a shriek of startled laughter at Dean’s suddenly passionate necking, a noise that trailed into a pleased hum. He shivered at the scrape of Dean’s stubble against his throat and shoulder, and, as Dean had hoped, rolled his hips up in renewed interest. Lazy as the movement was, Dean figured he could work with it.

“Shower,” Casey said instead, to Dean’s disappointment, wiggling out from underneath him and out of bed. But then he trailed back a hand to grab Dean’s wrist and pull him along. With a smirk returning in full force, Dean followed eagerly.

*

They didn’t manage sex in the shower, having already learned that lesson two weeks ago (though that didn’t stop Dean from trying). They even made it all the way to the kitchen, practically giddy on the renewed stability of things between them, where Casey made grilled cheese and pancakes even though it was seven o’clock at night. Dean ate in nothing but a damp towel wrapped around his waist and another turbaned around his head; Casey wore Dean’s boxers and t-shirt, and the juxtaposition of Casey’s oddly conservative coverage of his still-flat chest made Dean’s heart flip.

Halfway through the pancake batter, Dean’s patience ran out. Nuzzling and pawing from behind, he eased Casey back from the stove, silencing Casey’s half-hearted attempts at demurral with teasing kisses until Casey stopped protesting and twisted around to drag Dean into a proper kiss. Dean growled and surged against him, and things devolved rapidly in a flurry of hands and shed clothing.

He pinned Casey up against a wall easily, Casey’s legs hitched up around his hips again, and damn it all to hell if the sight of Dean’s boxers dangling from one of Casey’s outstretched ankles wasn’t the hottest thing he’d ever seen.

Casey slid onto his cock quickly, still slick and open inside despite the shower, head arching back in ecstasy at the stretch of Dean’s girth inside him. There wasn’t quite as much lubrication as he needed, but that just made it raw and rough and fucking fantastic, made him claw Dean’s back a little harder at the burn of each stroke.

The muscles of his arms bulging with effort, Dean held Casey up and fucked into him mercilessly, spurred on by every delighted word Casey rasped in his ear, every goading scratch and bite Casey laid on his shoulders and back. Grunting and snarling, they poured the torrent of their passion and wild relief into each other all over again, like they hadn’t done it just an hour ago.

The pancakes still on the stove were burning, Dean could smell them, and Casey was laughing, hitching it out long and vivid between gasps for breath and the jolt of Dean’s pistoning hips, and Dean just—could not—stop. He sucked and bit at Casey’s neck because it was the only thing he could reach, fucking him harder and faster as the pressure built between them. Casey’s cock bounced in the space between them, slapping wetly against their bellies, making Casey whimper and shudder.

“Fuck, yes, like that,” Dean muttered, his mouth wet and filthy on Casey’s throat, “god, Case— _fuck_ , Casey, fucking perfect, ngh—” —and it went on and on until somewhere in the flow of it Dean rumbled, “That’s it, sweetheart, good girl, come on,” and Casey came like a rocket, utterly without warning, jolting and yelling with the white-lightning shock of it.

Come spurted against Dean’s stomach, Casey clenched tight around him, and Dean folded forwards into sudden orgasm himself, managing one final thrust into Casey before he came. Shaking and gasping, they slid down to the floor in a tangle of limbs, skin sticky with sweat and come. Dean didn’t know who was clutching tighter, him or Casey, but in that moment he thought that as long as he never, ever stopped tugging at Casey’s hair to pull him ever closer and kissing him desperately, it would all be okay.

*

The next day, Dean and John were back at the dump, the Impala and John’s truck parked behind a stand of tall bushes by the entrance. Dean tossed a piece of carpeting over the barbed wire on top of the fence and John scaled it quickly, followed moments later by Dean. On the other side, Dean found himself waiting for the third _thud_ of feet landing in the dirt, realising too late that it wasn’t going to come and he should have dragged the carpet down after himself.

John looked back at him, at the carpet still hanging on the fence. “Get it on the way back over,” was all John said, turning back and adjusting his grip on his rifle. “Just as well. We might need to get out fast.”

Dean’s face burned red. He knew he’d screwed up, thinking for even a second that Sammy was still with them, and that kind of shit could get them both killed, Dean relying on someone who wasn’t there. He didn’t want John to even acknowledge the mistake, shouldn’t need Dad to make excuses for his fuck-ups any more.

“Dean, get a move on,” John barked. Hitching the bag of weapons over his shoulder, Dean hurried to catch up.

They buried the cat in what John guessed was about the middle of the dump, or at least as far into it as they could get on the roads that had been kept clear for vehicles. Dean stamped down the soil over the hole, which was nearly identical to the ones dug in the victims’ lawns and so shallow that mangy fur poked through the gravel in some places. Vaguely, he wondered where John had gotten the cat, if someone was missing their pet or if the town pound was just short one poor stray.

“You had to let it rot a while first?” he grunted, exchanging the shovel for a shotgun loaded with rock salt rounds, a new trick John had picked up from a couple hunters in Omaha. Easier than flinging table salt around, that was for sure.

“Smell’s what attracts the thing. None of the victims were attacked before the cat’d been dead for two days at least, and I found one woman in the other town who’d found the cat the next day and dug it up. She got off scot free. I figure it’s a way of marking the next meal for future reference.”

“So we’re in here pissing on its territory,” Dean said, though he still didn’t know how John had concluded that the thing would be living in a garbage dump. A guess, maybe. Dad was sharp like that. Dean was impressed at what John had put together from the evidence and soaked it up eagerly. He knew damn well that John didn’t just explain himself; if he was talking, he was teaching and he expected Dean to learn.

“Quiet,” John said, but without bite.

Nonetheless, Dean settled immediately, the order allowing him to still and silence himself easily: it became a duty, and duty Dean understood.

Dean’s eyes were burning with exhaustion by the time the thing finally showed. They both twitched at the clatter of metal nearby, just as they had the last seven fruitless times. That time, however, a wave of stench washed over them a moment later, far more powerful than the stink of the garbage around them. The acrid reek of rotting meat and bile was strong enough to make Dean’s eyes water. The witnesses hadn’t been exaggerating, for once.

John fired first, snapping off three lead rounds into the darkness before Dean could make out a damn thing. There was a screech, however, and a frantic scraping of claws over metal, and then Dean had a target—something huge and gangly, vaguely like a Wendigo but with too many joints that moved all the wrong ways, that came rushing towards them with its stinking maw open wide and a shriek that made Dean’s skin crawl.

He emptied both barrels into its centre mass, from far enough away that the rock salt had spread enough to hit almost every part of the thing. It screamed and recoiled, legs folding out from underneath it at the blast. Dean broke the shotgun open to empty the spent shells and reload, even though he and John could both already tell that salt wasn’t going to cut it.

While the thing was down, spidery limbs jerking every which way, John pulled his .45 from its holster and brought it to bear. _Silver bullets_ , Dean thought, just before John calmly squeezed the trigger twice.

Dean saw both shots hit, saw the creature jerk and friggin’ _backflip_ itself up onto its feet like water snapping off a hot pan. John cursed and double-tapped it again, but it vanished back into the darkness without anything more than a stumble and a scream.

“Iron,” John ordered tersely, keeping the .45 full of useless silver rounds raised to cover Dean while he reloaded with the consecrated iron buckshot. They’d run through more than half the basic arsenal in the first twenty seconds, and nothing seemed to even _faze_ the thing.

Motion out of the corner of Dean’s eye caught his attention. Still in the process of chambering the second round, he spun to face it, snapped the breach shut and raised and fired all in the same motion. A grating, furious howl overlapped with the blast of his shot. In the dark, the creature tumbled down the heap of rubbish it had scaled. Eyes squinted, Dean tracked it with the gun, finger tense and ready for the round left in the chamber.

He heard the oiled hiss of John drawing his knife. Blade at the ready, John moved forward, circling to the side enough that Dean kept a clear line of sight at all times.

It wasn’t dead or even dying, they realised, just so broken from buckshot and bullets that it had finally collapsed. Flat on its—well, Dean thought it was flat on its back—it twitched and twisted as they closed in on it, trying to keep its milky, disease-blue eyes on them. The top part of its hairy, flattened scalp had been ripped almost right off by one of their shots, and yet its lips drew back from its fangs in a guttering snarl that ran red with blood and a watery stream of bile and half-digested meat that it seemed to be regurgitating reflexively. Dean screwed up his face in disgust.

“When in doubt,” John muttered, obviously steeling himself to jump on the thing, “cut off the head.”

And if that didn’t work, they’d be pretty much screwed, because beyond bullets, salt, silver, iron and decapitation, fire was the only basic go-to method left for something they still didn’t have a clue how to identify. After that, the trick was almost definitely some kind of ritual method that they’d never be able to guess, like gouging out its eyes with a brass spoon or puncturing its heart six times (but not five or seven), or draining the water out of its head by making it bow or something else stupid like that.

Decapitation worked. Dean was pretty sure it had died by the time John had opened up its throat to the spinal column, but just to be sure, John went through all the way. The wet pop of the knife parting the last two vertebrae echoed loudly in the night, and despite the stink and the mess Dean couldn’t help but grin.

*

The euphoria of a long hunt finally gone right lasted all the way back to the motel.

It was stupid, how much of a surprise it was when the first thing John did was toss his duffel onto his bed and start packing in dirty clothing with military efficiency.

“Get your things packed. We’re leaving in half an hour.”

“What?” Dean stood there dumbly, frozen, as the two halves of his life collided for the first time—staying with Casey and hunting with Dad. Somehow—somehow he’d managed to fool himself into thinking it would never happen, congratulating himself on keeping them so separate for so long. His chest seized up as hard as it had when Sammy had shown him that damn Stanford letter, because he knew, oh, now he _knew_ what was going to happen—

“Something wrong with your hearing?” John demanded. He looked around at Dean, stared at Dean’s stricken expression for a few seconds before settling on comprehension and irritation. “Dean, for god’s sake, if you can’t stop yourself from getting attached to a girl after more than two days then you’d better just keep it in your pants from now on. You know better than that.”

“Yessir, I know,” Dean agreed automatically, swallowing hard. He felt crazy, his head full of echoes and cotton that kept him from thinking straight.

“Then get going,” ordered John, going back to his own things. “We’ve got a job out west that’s been sitting for a few days already, and I want to make Nebraska City by morning.”

“Look, can I just—” He flinched under the stare that was turned his way, hard and flat and unforgiving of the critical transgressions Dean _knew_ he had already made, but he couldn’t stop. He had to try, had to fight—even John, he’d fight—hell, he’d beg if he had to, even if it meant showing Dad how badly he still failed at things.

“Just _what_ , Dean?” John demanded roughly. “You want to stay behind, is that it? You’d rather abandon your family like your brother, is that it?”

“Dad, please. You could. Go ahead without me. Just give me an hour, that’s all. I’ll be in Nebraska City by morning, I swear.”

John left the room in a storm of fury, without speaking another word to Dean, who stood there and bore the accusatory silence mutely, knowing better than to try anything else. He’d provoked it and he damn well deserved it. He almost didn’t dare move to the motel door, which John had left hanging open, to watch John climb into his truck.

When John started the engine immediately, though, it was as good as permission. “I don’t want to hear a damn word about how tired you are tomorrow, you hear me?” John snapped out the driver’s side window, and put his foot to the gas.

Dean couldn’t process anything but relief at the sight of his father’s shrinking tail lights.

He ran for the Impala.

*

It was like this, Dean figured. It was about secrets.

They were important, even necessary. Most of the time, they had to be kept—it wasn’t okay to just go around crushing people’s lives with the weight of secrets they shouldn’t have been exposed to, leaving them jumping and afraid at the sound of trees scratching at the window glass for the rest of their lives. Secrets were for their own good.

Secrets were for _his_ own good. They kept him safe, kept him and hunters like him out of jail and out of the loony bin.

Dean didn’t tell the truth because there was too much of a possibility he wouldn’t get the truth in return, and that— _that_ was the worst thing. Might as well cut off a limb and give that away instead.

But Casey had shared his secret with Dean, and that was an action bigger than the sum of its parts; it was the sharing of implications and responsibility and the part of Casey’s life that had been built around— was entangled with— that secret. It had been a one-sided sharing, an imbalance, a vulnerability left unanswered.

So, Dean thought, readying himself as he walked up the last flight of stairs to Casey’s apartment, he owed it to Casey to give his secret back. It was the only thing worth anything that he had to give, and Casey—Cassie—would see, she’d have to see that Dean was telling the truth when he said he’d be coming back, he’d make it work, he’d do everything and anything and he _loved_ her. He—

He loved her.

He took a breath and raised his hand to knock.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. It is not acceptable to continue referring to a trans* person by his/her/zir assigned pronouns and name after he/she/zie has explicitly expressed a desire to be called by the pronouns and name linked to his/her/zir actual gender. Dean did so because of his lack of education on that front. Obviously he had this problem fixed by the time "Route 666" rolled around-- "she," "Cassie," etc.
> 
> 2\. There is an actual local legend about a spooklight on a gravel road in Dunklin County, MO.
> 
> 3\. In the writing of this story, I drew on my own knowledge and experiences as a trans person. However, because of the sensitivity of the topic (and the fact that there are so few trans characters in fic that I want to do it as well as possible), criticism and discussion of my portrayal of a trans character is welcome.


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